Thoughts on Parashat Re’eh 5785
It all happened in early June, 2003, during finals weeks in the third year of my philosophy studies, at my university in Lublin. I was a very good student, an A-student, but I was not particularly disciplined back then. And precisely because of that I had to spend a whole night on studying for my final, yearly exam in Epistemology – the theory of cognition and knowledge. The oral exam was at 9 am, I got A- and went back to my dorm, to sleep.
I slept the entire day. I woke up in the evening, shortly before twilight. I checked my Nokia 3310 phone and found a message from a friend: we’re having a finals week party in the Dormitory on Zana Street. Great, I thought, I don’t even have to look for a party, the party sent me an invitation.
So I went there. It was 9, maybe 10 pm. Everybody in the room was already drunk, or completely stoned, or both. Initially I thought I would be able to catch up with them but after about an hour and two beers I gave up. “Hey, I’m going home, I will see you later guys”. – You’re going home?? Said one of my drunk friends, mumbling like drunk people do. – Yes, I am. – I’m gonna go with, he responded. – Mee too said another one.
So, I went back to my dorm, which was on campus, about 1 mile away, together with my two drunk friends. We walked through a relatively peaceful neighbourhood. Suddenly, one of my friends suddenly stumbled and fell on a car that was parked on a residential road. Within seconds, three thugs ran from around the corner and started beating us. I was about 20 feet ahead, I turned around and saw what was happening and saw it was no fun for the attackers – the victims did not fight, nor resist and after a few punches they were both lying on the sidewalk. Seeing the scene I quickly “decided” to follow my primal instinct and started to run away. And it was my mistake. They ran after me and caught me about 300-400 feet away.
As you can imagine, all their anger and lust for violence focused on me. After a few punches and kicks I was lying on the sidewalk as well. But they didn’t stop. They kicked me while I was lying on the ground. I received, I don’t know – difficult to count, difficult to remember – but at least two, maybe three dozens of punches and kicks. In the end they stole my wallet and my phone and ran away, but I’m absolutely sure that was not the motive for this attack. They were just bloodthirsty; most likely on drugs, they simply wanted to hurt someone, and hurt badly. They achieved their goal – I was lying on the ground in a pool of blood.
My two friends sobered up a bit but not completely; they got up, walked towards me and helped me to get up; then they helped me get to our dormitory – we were about half way through. When we got to our dorm, each one of us went to their rooms. I got to mine, where I lost consciousness.
Then something that most likely saved my life happened. Within maybe 20 minutes one of my friends, who lived next door, came to my room. He had a problem with his computer and came to ask for advice. The room was open; he came inside and found me on the floor in another pool of blood. He immediately called the ambulance and police. He lifted me up and walked me downstairs. He also ferociously scolded the doorwoman downstairs who was on guard that night. How come you just let them in without any reaction?? Why didn’t you call an ambulance, why didn’t you call the police?
After a brief talk with the police – I regained my consciousness after my friend woke me up – I ended up in the hospital, on ICU. For the next six days I was barely conscious, maybe for a half an hour a day, when someone visited me and woke me up. I know that on the first day 26 people visited me, in one group. Then my parents came – they had to travel half a day to get there. After these 6 days they finally did a CT scan of my brain – they thought I would just get better by myself! – and found a hematoma on my frontal lobes. Within a few hours they brought a neurosurgeon from the Medical university, I believe, to perform the surgery.
I woke up in the morning, fully conscious and feeling pretty well. I got up but they told me to lie down and stay like this for at least 2-3 days.
But, as you can guess, I wasn’t well psychologically, after this traumatic experience. My soul was torn apart by various feelings – a desire for revenge, justice, but also a feeling of fundamental gratitude for simply being alive. Sometimes I imagined those thugs being thrown into the pool filled with water mixed with acid – yes, that was one of my vengeful fantasies. But after I left the hospital after another two weeks, the feelings of gratitude for being alive prevailed and these nasty fantasies went away.
Within a few months two important things happened, in terms of my internal, spiritual life, that determined the rest of my life. First, the existential fear – fear of death I pretty often experienced as a young person – completely went away. But more importantly, I realized something absolutely fundamental, namely, that what experienced something that should be called pure evil, pure and objective evil, that simply can’t be put into a perspective from which it won’t be seen as evil anymore. But that obviously wasn’t the end of my thought process but just the beginning. I also realized that since pure, objective evil exists, there may be, or even must be, pure objective good – something religious philosophers were searching for for thousands of years. My whole philosophical, religious and ethical worldview turned 180 degrees. I completely rejected moral relativism – something that was almost my religion before. I became a spiritual person, actively searching for truth and moral guidelines.
I learned A LOT from this experience and it changed the course of my entire life. But I will focus on one, fundamental lesson I learned from it, i.e., that good and evil exist objectively and despite hardships that flow from this claim, they can be fundamentally distinguished, contrary to what the post-modern culture regularly feeds us with. This lesson, this philosophical statement has its clear expression right at the beginning of our parasha for this week:
See, this day I set before you blessing and curse: blessing, if you obey the commandments of your God יהוה that I enjoin upon you this day; and curse, if you do not obey the commandments of your God יהוה, but turn away from the path that I enjoin upon you this day and follow other gods, whom you have not experienced. (Deuteronomy 11:26-28)
Yes, there are plenty of things that are relative in the universe, and there are certainly things that are relative in ethics. But this common realization is by no means a proof that everything is relative. To make this jump, to draw such a general conclusion from the simple, everyday observation – that there are things that are relative – is plain intellectual laziness.
So no, while there are things in the universe that are relative or subjective – and there are a lot of things whose perception depend on a certain viewpoint or or preconditions set in an individual human mind – there are also things whose essence does not depend on who is perceiving and judging them. Things like murder – i.e. unjustified killing – or any kind of violence done out of hate, to simply satisfy some human desire or just to release some human tension – are objectively evil. Every unethical act that bears serious consequences and is at the same irreversible – is objectively wrong and quite often – objectively evil. In our Jewish history there is an extreme amount of examples of cases of objective evil. For example, every child or young Jewish person murdered in the Holocaust could have had many descendants. There could have been 30, maybe even 40 million Jews in the world right now. There are 15.8 million of us, we are barely approaching our numbers from before WWII. Slander, especially if repetitive and widespread, is another example here. Every irreversible immoral act – like adultery which often permanently, irreversibly harms the love relationship between two people – is objectively wrong and typically has similar, objective consequences.
It’s all true and we instinctively understand that. The main problem now is that the language currently being employed by our culture flattens the moral universe. It takes objective eternal truths and makes them sound like opinions. The architects of this flat, relativist language spent decades in their cozy, comfortable offices at their universities reprogramming language, all known ethical notions, freedom, justice, even reality itself. But this intellectual project, no matter how well planned and how much supported, won’t last very long. It’s currently crumbling before our own eyes. Reality – and God, the universal lawgiver – are knocking on our doors. We are approaching a new spiritual and intellectual era. Much happier than the one we are leaving behind. Mark my words.
Shabbat shalom
Rabbi Mirski
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